Bottling Day

Time to make mistakes, messes, and learn!

Two-thirds of the effort in home-brewing is cleaning again and again.

Step 1 for bottling (after clean and sanitize): Dissolve priming sugar.

Shane became very interested when it was time to use the siphon. Have I mentioned he's fascinated with how liquids flow?

He turned out to be helpful a couple of times. The pin at the bottom of the bottling wand got stuck open a time or two and I must have spilled at least half a bottle's worth of beer.

I only filled 7 bottles. I noticed too late that 6 of my bottles were pop tops and the other four were screw tops. A video online warned me that trying to put pop tops on a screw bottle with my hand capper could break the glass. I had one unopened beer in the fridge I used a screw top for and then had to pour out my excess (probably about a bottle's worth or more).

After a break, I cleaned everything and started batch #2. I feel like I learned a lot from the first batch and I wanted to use my improved technique at least once. This time, I had a kit for a kolsch.

The recipe didn't mention how much water to start with. I committed the opposite of the mistake I made the first time: I put too much water in to start. The pot overflowed a little when I started to gingerly add my dehydrated grains. I had to skim a little off and then go back to adding. It was only a little spill, but I can confirm wort makes for a crusty, sticky mess.

The sink acted as a wort chiller again.

Two more lessons:
1) Our ice maker doesn't make ice very quickly. In 12 hours I had maybe three or four times the ice I had last time.
2) It takes a lot more ice than that.

The initial cooldown was faster, but it still took me 50 minutes to get the wort to around 80 degrees. The instructions didn't say to stir, so I didn't (I found a website later that said, "Stir" but too late). The sediment almost looked like a loaf of bread.

Funny bad idea staged shot:

I took an OG reading this time and it was a little lower than it should have been. Good enough for me, though. I threw it in the fermenter and called it a night.

The beers were hanging out on the shelf above.

I think this is it for me. I was more interested in the learning and the experience than the beer. Maybe it will help me connect with someone or understand a story. I don't drink 10 beers in three weeks, so there's no reason to maintain production. It's more expensive per bottle to brew my own beer than to let a professional do it. Five gallon kits are more economical, but if I don't drink 10 brews in the time it takes to free up bottles for the next batch what would I do with 50?

I'd love for one of these batches to turn out, but screw-ups make for good stories, too.